Nursing Bras That Show Mothers in More Than ‘Work Mode’

Wednesday

Aug 31, 2011 at 12:01 AMSep 1, 2011 at 5:03 PM

These bras were once matronly, with little color, but today designers are adding conspicuous hues, design details and even nicknames.

MATERNITY and nursing bras have long been the ugly stepsisters to gorgeously constructed lingerie. If you became pregnant or nursed your child, scratchy, unadorned, matronly bras — probably colored inconspicuously “nude” or white — were your lot. Elisabeth Dale, the founder of the Web site The Breast Life, which has bra reviews and health information, says she thinks this was because functionality and sex appeal can seem incompatible.

When your breasts “are in work mode, they don’t get to wear nice fabrics,” she said wryly, adding that you’re “sterilizing” your breasts “by putting them in a boring white milk curtain.”

But perhaps not anymore. Some of today’s maternity and nursing bras boast lace in conspicuous hues like coral or purple, with added features like rhinestones, and coy nicknames like Awakened by Her Desire and She Craved a Little Decadence. This, of course, along with convenient hooks that allow each cup to drop for easy access to hungry newborns, extra fastenings to accommodate diaphragm growth and comfortable linings.

In the last few years, a growing number of niche lingerie companies, like You Lingerie, Cake, and HOTmilk, have begun selling unapologetically provocative maternity bras that they say can be a pick-me-up for new mothers during a stressful time. “It’s really about celebrating the sexy woman inside the loving mother,” said Lisa Ebbing, the marketing director at HOTmilk, an import from New Zealand that had one of its video ads of a stunning mother-to-be in a matching bra and panty placed under age restrictions by YouTube after viewers flagged it.

“I love being a mother, but lingerie is not for a mother,” Ms. Ebbing said, defending the images. “It’s for a woman.”

Tiffany Holtzinger, 24, a stay-at-home mother in York, Pa., recalled that, when she decided to breast-feed her third child, she refused to settle for “plain, frumpy-looking bras” that she found “disgusting.” A month after her son’s birth, Mrs. Holtzinger bought Cake’s navy-and-white floral-print balcony-shaped bra on Zulily, a daily-deals Web site, to add to her collection of three HOTmilk bras, one in navy with contrasting cobalt mesh frill on cups and straps.

“I can see myself wearing these after I’m done nursing,” she said. (To do just that, Bravado Designs, known for its more basic styles, has a kit to remove shoulder clips after weaning.)

Kirsten Cannon, 20, an actress and a waitress in Paducah, Ky., says she made do with basic nursing bras she bought at Wal-Mart until her daughter, Georgia, was 9 months old. “I had reached a point that I’d almost forgotten who I was as a woman,” Ms. Cannon said, explaining why she bought HOTmilk’s Radiant in Her Rescue, a peachy floral-print bra offset with gardenia-patterned lace (roughly $40 with underwear). “I needed a pick-me-up. I needed my husband to look at me like I wasn’t just Georgia’s mom.”

Much has changed in the two decades since the Vanity Fair cover of Demi Moore naked in her third trimester caused a stir. There is now no shortage of celebrities flaunting bared bumps for magazine covers, or “yummy mummies” at the local playground. Designer maternity garb runs the gamut from flirty to sophisticated. Perhaps it was only a matter of time that expectant and nursing mothers sought out provocative underthings with distinctive details, a world away from the black T-shirt bra look-alikes sold at outlets like Destination Maternity.

Tracey Montford, the designer of Cake Lingerie, said she was inspired to help start the company, based in Sydney, Australia, because “baggy matronly lingerie doesn’t make you feel good.”

“I enjoy my fashion,” she said, but “I had horrendous bras peeking through the top and ruining my outfits.”

Apparently Aussies are ahead of the curve, as it were: the model-turned-entrepreneur Elle Macpherson has had a few nursing and maternity styles on the market since 2005.

And since roughly the same time, the British boundary-pushing lingerie company Agent Provocateur has sold its Cupid maternity-nursing bra.

But the average Jane is also venturing into the market. “One of the biggest drivers is women are accepting their bodies for what they are, and not hiding it or being ashamed,” said Uyo Okebie-Eichelberger, the 31-year-old founder of You Lingerie, a 10-month-old company in Atlanta that sells attractive maternity bras for $29.99 to $34.99. “Another driver is the rapid growth in size, influence and power of online mommy culture.”

Mrs. Okebie-Eichelberger’s brand, which is carried in 30 brick-and-mortar clothing stores, got exposure from Web sites like The Bump and BabyCenter, she said.

Cake, which came stateside in 2010, now is carried in 100 brick-and-mortar stores, making the United States its “fastest growing market” globally, according to Keith Hyams, the company’s marketing director. “We found, to start, some of our pieces with more neutral colors were selling very well,” his colleague, Ms. Montford, said. These days, “pieces with a bit more lace, or adventurous in terms of color combinations are becoming popular,” like the Turkish delight ($59.90), a purple-knit number in either balcony or plunge styles that can be paired with a matching string thong ($29.90).

But Kathryn From, the managing director of Bravado, a no-frills line owned by Medela, the breast-pump maker, which is carried in 700 outlets nationwide, is skeptical that such daring items will do much business in the long run. “The No. 1 best seller in North America are smooth cupped nude bras,” she said, adding of her core customer: “We are much more your girlfriend who lives next door. She’s confident, and great, but isn’t overtly sexual.”

SOME find revealing items for nursing mothers “disturbing,” as Kathie Lee Gifford put it on the “Today” show in February, during a Valentine’s Day gifts segment that also featured chocolate handcuffs. “You’re going to breast-feed in that?” exclaimed her co-host, Hoda Kotb, upon seeing a You Lingerie’s Bella Cerise bra on a mannequin. Ms. Gifford added, “This is just distressing to me.”

Mrs. Okebie-Eichelberger, of You, said the “Today” segment “really enraged a lot of people” for “adding to the propaganda that mothers can’t be sexy,” but she added, it helped propel “our biggest sale ever.”

Heidi Rauch, a 42-year-old founder of Belabumbum, a sleek but understated lingerie brand that started selling nursing-bras in 2003, said of the new crop: “They speak to the stereotypical end of what is sexy. It’s pushing the edge with rhinestones.” By contrast, she said, “Our stuff will make you feel better in your skin at a time when everything is feeling different, but it’s not like it’s overtly too sexy.”

Indeed, the curious might wonder whether sleep-deprived women facing the challenges of postpartum life are buying lingerie in hopes of actually spurring desire.

But some of the customers of HOTmilk and its ilk said that they were still interested in sex, despite the demands of motherhood.

Melissa Whitford, a 32-year-old pediatric nurse practitioner in Rochester, who has an 8-month-old son and favors Cake’s lingerie, said: “It’s very important, being with your husband, and still having that kind of intimacy. It was him and me first, and he came along because of our love.”

Emily Bergstrom, 34, a fund-raiser in Seattle who just had her third child, bought six Bella Materna bras, and has a few kept after being a fit model. When she’s wearing one, she said, she feels more “supported and attractive.”

“Anything that makes you feel like a person aside from your caregiver role, not instead of, but in addition to the person who does the dishes and picks up the kids, I would say that’s huge,” Ms. Bergstrom said, adding, “sexual intimacy is still a priority.”

Ms. Whitford admitted, though, that sometimes the lace was just to give her a fashion boost. “Even when I’m cleaning up poop and breast-feeding, I like a little bit of glam and a little bit of fancy,” she said. “That’s just enough to feel good about yourself.”

And while Anne Dimond, who founded Bella Materna with Candace Urquhart (both are former designers for Nordstrom), said she hears from delighted customers who “cheer up because they had felt this loss of self” before they found a flattering bra. She also suggested that this has nothing to do with what happens between the sheets.

“As soon as you have the baby, nobody looks at you anymore,” Ms. Dimond said. “This is to treat yourself.”

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